Ashoka

In books like Values Chauffeur You, Curve 2, and Paper Head Last Lyrics, Levy has quietly been producing some of the most fascinatingly meditative avant-garde writing around. In his ninth collection, Ashoka, with subtlety and an extraordinary ear for detail, Levy has constructed a fifty-page poem that embodies the mysteries of suffering, faith and redemption into an emotionally complex yet accessible whole. "Andrew Levy's writing is exhilarating, particularly his new Ashoka (in Sanskrit, 'the active absence of sorrow'). This poem recognizes the baffling varieties in discourse and emotion as vistas upon which to play for the ensemble— a lyric ensemble listening for the intimacy it creates and maintains. Ashoka is among my favorite of Levy's books...but it also implies the radical work of his recent Paper Head Last Lyrics. Manuel Brito, in Tenerife, Spain, has produced another impressive book for his Zasterle Press, with beautiful cover art by Luis Palmero entirely befitting the